A Gallery In The Fast Lane Billboards Becomeartists' Canvases

Some artists don't mind if people give their work just a passing glance. Three Central Florida artists have turned billboards into their canvas to encourage art appreciation at 55 mph.

Their recently erected billboards don't shout commercial come-ons and aren't intended to sell. They are meant to catch the eye of drivers who probably wouldn't stop to visit an art gallery.

''It's important to have art out in public because it brings art to people who wouldn't normally come to a gallery opening or a museum,'' said David Cumbie, an Orlando artist whose collage, titled ''Cosmic Dave,'' has been blown up to billboard size -- 48 feet wide and 14 feet tall. Anyone driving east on the Bee Line Expressway just west of Orlando International Airport can't miss it.

Through May 16, Cumbie and two other artists are displaying their work on billboards. Anna Tomczak's untitled work can be seen along East Colonial Drive in Orlando just east of State Road 436, and Deborah Hildinger-Allen's ''Red Sky in Morning'' rises above West Colonial Drive between John Young Parkway and Mercy Drive. The three artists won a contest held by the Crealde School of Art in Winter Park and co-sponsored by the Arts United Fund for Central Florida and Orlando's Peterson Outdoor Advertising Corp.

Odd combination, art and billboards, considering that billboards are usually considered blights, not beauties. Yet a billboard that displays fine art is a reminder that billboards -- even when their message is commercial -- aren't necessarily crass clutter.

Admittedly, it's hard to consider billboards art when a drive along Interstate 4 provides a view of ''Dog Racing -- Now!'' and ''Flea World.'' Roadside Rembrandts these are not.

To most people, billboards are to art what bumper stickers are to literature. ''Visual pollution'' is how Orlando Mayor Bill Frederick once described them. The Coalition for Scenic Beauty crusades against ''billboard blight.'' Lady Bird Johnson, who abhorred billboards, badgered Congress until it passed the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which bans billboards outside commercial and industrial areas.

Last year the city took on billboard blight by passing a rule reducing the maximum size of billboards by 40 percent, and now the city is getting stringent about enforcing its sign code. All this, and billboards are still tough to get rid of. A recent U.S. Transportation Department study found that 8,200 new billboards were authorized in Florida during a five-year period and only 2,000 old ones were removed.

Such proliferation irks billboard haters. To them, roadside advertisements -- for cigarettes and booze, tourist attractions and banks, suntan lotions and soft drinks -- are eyesores infringing on the landscape.

Although the worst billboards may be tacky, offensive and intrusive, the best ones can be creative and clever, and can even serve as community bulletin boards.

A South Daytona woman once used a billboard to make a public display of affection: ''Ronald, I Love You! Yes, I Will Be Your Wife.'' When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, a somber commemorative billboard went up in Orlando. When President Reagan came to town, up went a billboard with his portrait and the words ''Welcome to Orlando, Mr. President.'' The Smithsonian Institution requested the sign for a roadshow.

In an era when an artist is more likely to be paid for designing a billboard than a piece of fine art, art is bound to show up along the highway. Renowned British painter David Hockney has said that watching billboards change is exciting. A highway, he said, becomes ''sort of like a little gallery to drive down.''

The billboard industry blossomed during the giddy 1950s, creating a highway sideshow with attention-grabbing cutouts of gigantic hamburgers, with light sculptures that splashed neon Coke over neon ice cubes, with enormous lips that puffed cigarette smoke.

The same art movements exhibited in respected galleries and museums -- surrealism, op art, pop art and realism -- have influenced billboard designs from the 1950s through the '80s. Exhibits in the billboard gallery have included a three-dimensional nose that seems to float in the sky like a head in a surrealistic Magritte painting; eye-catching sequins that move in the wind to create an op-art effect; and an enormous Coke can that lies on a mountain of ice and recalls Andy Warhol's pop-art Campbell's soup cans.

''No longer merely a form of marketing, the billboard images transcended their initial purpose to become an expansive, modern-day art form,'' proclaim Sally Henderson and Robert Landau in their book Billboard Art.

Even when their artistic merit is in doubt, billboards can become landmarks. Electronic billboards give New York's Times Square and London's Piccadilly Circus their trashy flash.

In Orlando there's the huge speedometer sign with a moving arrow that stands outside the Ice Cold Auto Air shop. After 21 years on East Colonial Drive, it must come down to comply with the city's sign code, which considers the sign too big, too low and too close to the road. The moving, lighted arrow isn't allowed, either.

''To tear that down would really be devastating,'' said Don Gilliland, 27, an Orlando native and record-store owner who defended the sign in a letter to the editor of The Orlando Sentinel.

The ''sacred'' speedometer sign is akin to a historic landmark, said Gilliland. It's in the same league as Church Street Station, Tinker Field, the CNA building and the Merita Bread clock on I-4. Deserving or not, billboards rarely get such high praise.